November 27, 2023
Bribing Homeowners To Build Tiny Houses Won’t Solve NYC’s Housing Problem
Those who believe New York City not only needs more housing but more types of housing to serve its many types of households should be cheered by the Adams administration’s support for “granny flats.” These small “accessory dwelling units” built in backyards, converted basements or converted garages can help homeowners pay their mortgages and older adults…
November 16, 2023
“Harm Reduction” Is No Solution
Advocates of so-called safe-injection sites are seizing on a new study that finds crime has apparently not increased in East Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods featuring overdose-prevention centers. The decline in arrests is welcome news, of course, but not necessarily proof that crime has lessened; the study found a rise in 311 calls about drug activity, for…
November 13, 2023
How The IRS Discourages Boomer Charity
Americans like to call ourselves the most generous nation on earth — but charitable giving is on the decline. In 2022, it fell 3.4% (10.5% when adjusted for inflation) to fall under $500 billion. It was only the fourth such decline in 40 years. What’s more, individual giving — distinguished from that of foundations and corporations…
November 9, 2023
What Dems — And NYC — Can Learn From The GOP’s Bronx City Council Win
Some will attribute Kristy Marmorato’s election as the first Republican to represent The Bronx in City Council in 40 years to selfish NIMBY-ism. And there is no doubt her opposition to two subsidized- (a k a “affordable-”) housing developments in the northeast Bronx (District 13) were a key factor in her defeating incumbent Democrat Marjorie Velazquez —…
November 3, 2023
A Postcard from Ashkelon
Ashkelon, in the Hamas-targeted south of Israel, a few kilometers from Gaza, is the region’s largest Israeli city. It’s also the Israeli city that has been struck by more rockets than any other—more than a thousand. As I read about that, I think of my grandmother and the postcard she sent me from her trip…
October 24, 2023
Roanoke Atones for Urban Renewal—Artistically
Discussions of the ill effects of public housing, urban renewal, and urban freeways usually focus on big cities: the Chicago-lakefront hellhole called the Robert Taylor Homes, now-demolished; Robert Moses’s Cross-Bronx Expressway, which tore through the heart of that borough; the brutalist Boston Government Center, which replaced the vibrant Scollay Square. But a moving new exhibit…
October 13, 2023
Liberals Reap Consequences Of Their Homeless Policies
It’s cliche to observe that socially conservative views emerge when liberals are “mugged by reality.” But when it happens to the governor of California and the local leadership of Portland and Seattle, it’s not trite — it’s important. That’s exactly what has happened in the form of a push by leaders from every Western state asking the…
October 12, 2023
Blue States Are Getting More Federal Money Than They Should
The late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan long complained — and commissioned data — about New York’s status as a “donor state,” for sending more in tax dollars to Washington than it received in return in the form of grants. This was always a misunderstanding of the virtues of the U.S. being a vast free-trade…
October 12, 2023
Blue-State Benefits: How Federal Grants Fail to Consider Population Shift
Abstract The federal government annually awards hundreds of billions of dollars in grants to states. In this report, I examine funding for the largest federal grant programs for 2020–22, focusing on grants-in-aid that do not fully adjust for population change. For states losing population, I calculate “avoided reductions,” the difference between the grants a state…
October 4, 2023
Variety Is the Spice
At first glance, Mayor Eric Adams’s extensive new citywide rezoning plan, meant to encourage new housing, may seem like more of the problematic same. It emphasizes, for instance, the construction of yet more “permanently affordable” new apartments through the dubious means of permitting more units to be built if some get set aside as “income restricted.” This “inclusionary”…